Have you seen something incredibly persuasive or inspiring? Got your own list of reasons or a personal story? Send it in to forwardthis@barackobama.com and maybe we’ll forward it to everyone else.

TRANSCRIPT

ROSE: Will you endorse President Obama this race?

POWELL: Well, you know I voted for him in 2008 and I plan to stick with him in 2012, and I’ll be voting for he and for Vice President Joe Biden next month.

ROSE: That’s an endorsement for President Obama for re-election?

POWELL: Yes. And let me say why. When he took over the country was in very, very difficult straits, we were in one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression. The fiscal system was collapsing. Wall Street was in chaos. We had 800,000 jobs lost in that first month of the Obama administration and unemployment would peak a few months later at 10%. So we were in real trouble. The auto industry was collapsing. The housing industry was starting to collapse, and we were in very difficult straits. And I saw over the next several years stabilization come back in the financial community, housing is now starting to pick up after four years, it’s starting to pick up. Consumer confidence is rising.

So I think generally we’ve come out of the dive and we’re starting to gain altitude. It doesn’t mean we are problem solved, there are lots of problems still out there. The unemployment rate is too high. People are still hurting in housing. But I see that we are starting to rise up. I also saw the President get us out of one war, start to get us out of a second war and did not get us into any new wars. And finally, I think that the actions he’s taken with respect to protecting us from terrorism have been very, very solid.

And so I think we ought to keep on the track that we are on. With respect to Governor Romney, I have the utmost respect to him but as I listen to what his proposals are especially with respect to dealing with our most significant issue, the economy, it’s essentially let’s cut taxes and compensate for that with other things. But that compensation does not cover all of the cuts intended or the new expenses associated with defense.

The International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook makes for gloomy reading. Growth projections have been revised downward almost everywhere, especially in Europe and the big emerging markets such as China. And yet, when looking out over the next four years — the next presidential term — the IMF projects that the United States will be the strongest of the world’s rich economies. U.S. growth is forecast to average 3 percent, much stronger than that of Germany or France (1.2 percent) or even Canada (2.3 percent). Increasingly, the evidence suggests that the United States has come out of the financial crisis of 2008 in better shape than its peers — because of the actions of its government.

Good news — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has announced that it will begin supervising debt collection agencies starting on January 2, 2013.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published a rule today that will allow the agency to federally supervise the larger consumer debt collectors for the first time. The CFPB also released the field guide that examiners will use to ensure that companies and banks engaging in debt collection are following the law.

“Millions of consumers are affected by debt collection, and we want to make sure they are treated fairly,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Today we are announcing that we will be supervising the larger debt collectors in the market for the first time at the federal level. We want all companies to realize that the better business choice is to follow the law — not break it.”

I consider the creation of the CFPB to be one of the greatest achievements of the past four years, no thanks to the Republicans who fought tooth and nail to kill it.

The agency went without a director for over a year while Republicans blocked confirmation of Elizabeth Warren. The Republicans demanded that the agency be rendered toothless, ineffectual, and stripped of funding before they would confirm anyone as its director. President Obama later broke their blockade with a recess appointment of Richard Cordray, the former Attorney General of Ohio.

Perhaps it’s poetic justice that blocking Elizabeth Warren as the director of the bureau may end up costing Republican Senator Scott Brown his seat.

For the second time in eight years, the Buckeye State is poised to offer the decisive electoral votes to reelect an incumbent president. The polls show Obama with a lead of around 2 or 3 points, enough to make him a favorite but not enough to assure victory, especially since he remains beneath 49 percent of the vote. At first glance, Obama’s resilience in the Buckeye State seems to defy partisan history and demographics. It’s about the only state where Obama is doing so well where his chances depend on maintaining gains among white working-class voters who voted for Bush in 2004. But Obama’s success among African Americans and postgraduates has shifted the state toward Democrats, forcing Romney to compensate with white working class Kerry voters. And although there are clear opportunities for Romney to make gains in southern and southeastern Ohio, the Obama campaign’s strategy is perfectly suited to deny him the gains he needs.

But Obama’s road to victory in Ohio starts with a strong showing among the African American voters that provided Bush with reelection eight years ago. It’s often overlooked just how much Obama gains over Kerry’s performance just by winning an outsized share of African Americans. According to the 2004 exit polls, Bush’s concerted efforts to appeal to African American voters—mainly on cultural issues—held Kerry to just 84 percent of the black vote. African American voters predictably swung decisively toward Obama, offering him 97 percent of the vote on Election Day with an additional point of black turnout.

In 2004, Bush won Ohio by 118,000 votes, but Obama’s gains among African American voters are sufficient to erase Kerry’s deficit without any changes in the composition of the electorate. The exit polls show that approximately 550,000 African American voters cast ballots in Ohio and offered Kerry a margin of approximately 380,000 votes. If Kerry had won 97 percent of the black vote, as Obama did, then Kerry would have won black voters by a 530,000 vote margin. Thus, changes in black vote preference alone is sufficient to swing Ohio by 150,000 votes—enough to overcome Bush’s 118,000 vote victory. Obama makes additional gains from increased African American turnout. The 2008 exit polls showed African Americans increasing from 10 percent in 2004 to 11 percent in 2012, increasing his margin among African Americans by an additional 60,000 votes. If Obama can maintain elevated black turnout and support, he would transform Kerry’s 118,000 vote deficit into a 92,000 vote lead without persuading a single white Bush voter. These numbers aren’t exact, but they do show that Obama’s support among African Americans is enough to turn a lean-Republican state like Ohio into a true toss-up that might even tilt-Democratic without commensurate losses among white voters.

Obama ultimately won by 262,000 voters in Ohio and many of his additional gains came from rural northwest Ohio and the Columbus metropolitan area. Like many other white, moderate, but traditionally Republican areas in the northwestern part of the country (think Indiana, northeast Wisconsin, North Dakota), Obama’s performance in many parts of rural northwest Ohio was the best by any Democrat since 1964. Obama’s gains in the relatively affluent and well-educated Columbus metropolitan area were similar to his gains in other post-industrial metropolitan areas like Raleigh, Washington, and Denver—Bush won Ohio’s postgraduate voters by 2 points in 2004, but Obama would win them by 10 points. These gains were felt most clearly in Columbus, where Obama netted an additional 65,000 votes over Kerry’s performance. Elsewhere in Ohio, Obama made relatively small gains with white voters and actually did worse than Kerry in the Mahoning and Ohio River valleys of southeastern Ohio. But these losses weren’t nearly enough to overcome Obama’s huge gains in northwest Ohio, Columbus, and among African Americans.
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President Barack Obama holds a baby as he greets supporters during a campaign rally in Byrd Park in Richmond, Va., Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012. The president is on the second day of his 48 hour, 8 State campaign blitz. Photo: Steve Helber / AP

President Barack Obama’s lead in Virginia has extended to 5 points, according to the latest survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling released on Thursday.

Obama leads Mitt Romney among likely Commonwealth voters 51 percent to 46 percent — a jump from PPP’s survey of Virginia a week ago, which showed the president nursing a 2-point lead. More than half of Virginia voters, 51 percent, have a favorable opinion of Obama compared. Conversely, the same percentage has an unfavorable view of Romney.

The poll also shows a pronounced gender gap in Virginia. Obama leads by 16 points among women voters in the state, while Romneyholds a 5-point edge among men. Thursday’s poll was conducted on behalf of Health Care for America Now, a group founded to promote the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans have been pushing hard this week to convince people that Mitt Romney is wrapping up the presidential election. Since he’s not actually, well, leading, Romney partisans have relied on the idea that Romney has momentum: Even if he isn’t actually ahead yet, he is certain to take a commanding lead any minute now.

But that “momentum” appears to have been entirely an invention of Republican spinners. It’s certainly true that Romney made impressive gains on Barack Obama in roughly the first week of October, probably in most part as a consequence of the first debate. But after that, the contest has been almost completely flat. For example, the Pollster trend line shows the race a dead heat on October 8 — and that since then, any movement has been only by small fractions of a percentage point. Nate Silver’s “nowcast” bottomed out for the president on October 12, and since then he’s recovered quite a bit. There’s simply nothing in the last twelve days to indicate movement towards Romney.

Putting aside the present spin: why, indeed, should we ever talk about momentum? In fact, in thinking about elections, the idea of momentum is useless.

It’s worth thinking about three groups of voters who might change the horse race polls.

The first group is made up of truly independent, and undecided, voters. Most of them don’t pay very much attention at all to politics. Eventually, they will vote one way or another (at least if they vote), but they may be the most likely to swing between “undecided” and that candidate depending on what’s currently in the news. This create the impression of momentum, but the effect will be short lived, rather than continuous

Posted at 01:38 PM ET, 10/25/2012
Mitt Romney goes mum on Mourdock mess
By Greg Sargent
Mitt Romney is under increasing pressure today to further distance himself from Richard Mourdock after the Indiana GOP Senate candidate’s remarks about rape and God created a national firestorm. Yet according to various reports, the Romney camp has gone silent on the matter, and there are no public indications that this is going to change.

Democrats have succeeded into turning Mourdock’s comments into a second day national media story. This morning, Obama subtly tied Romney to Mourdock, saying: “As we saw again this week, I don’t think any politician in Washington, most of whom are male, should be making health care decisions for women.” Reporters hit Romney with another round of questions about Mourdock today, but according to CNN, Romney refused to answer them. As Jed Lewison puts it, Romney has “entered a virtual cocoon of silence.”

Why the Romney reticence? What’s the downside for Romney in cutting Mourdock loose, particularly given how intense the battle for the female vote has become?

Michael Cooper suggests an answer: Romney is worried that pulling support for Mourdock risks alienating evangelicals, whose turnout in the key battlegrounds may prove crucial to his hopes. Cooper:

White evangelical Christian voters made up 26 percent of the vote in 2008, but they were an even bigger slice of the electorate in some crucial swing states: Exit polls suggested that evangelicals made up 30 percent of the vote in Ohio, 31 percent in Iowa, 44 percent in North Carolina and 28 percent in Virginia. And those states voted for President Obama in 2008

Breaking: Court Unseals Potentially Devastating Testimony by Mitt Romney in Friend’s Divorce Case
Mitt Romney is being accused of lying under oath to protect the old boys’ network–and the documents have just gone public.

The controversy over Romney’s alleged lies under oath continues this Thursday, as a Massachusetts court unseals a testimony that some speculate could be devastating for the presidential candidate.

The famed feminist lawyer Gloria Allred has said that Mitt Romney lied in the divorce proceedings between her client, Maureen Sullivan Stemberg, and her husband, Tom, in order to protect the financial wealth of the former CEO of Staples. If the allegations are true, the revelation could be yet another blow to the GOP during an election cycle in which many of the candidates have played old-boy’s-club politics and demonstrated disregard and sometimes outright scorn for women.

Earlier this week, the New York Times’ Nate Silver wrote about the gaping “gender gap” at the heart of the presidential race, specifically the degree to which women are breaking for Barack Obama and men are breaking for Mitt Romney. On average, polls show Obama beating Romney by nine points with women, while Romney has a nine-point advantage with men. All in all, that’s an 18-point gender gap, a powerful indicator of just how much each candidate’s chance of victory depends on one sex or the other.

President Obama and his campaign had no advanced warning that Colin Powell would be endorsing the president Thursday, Jen Psaki, traveling press secretary for the campaign, said during a press gaggle Thursday according to a White House pool report. The president learned of the endorsement just before an early event in Tampa, Fla., and called Powell to thank him.

Here’s the description in the pool report:

The Obama team had no advance warning of Colin Powell endorsement and learned about it while holding before the event in Tampa. Before taking stage, [Obama] called Powell to thank him, though there was no discussion of any joint appearances. Psaki said they were “very excited” about the endorsement: “We think it sends a strong signal about why he should be sent back for another four years to be commander in chief.”

John McCain bitterly denounced former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday for supporting President Obama for a second straight election.

“General Powell, you disappoint us and you have harmed your legacy even further by defending what is clearly the most feckless foreign policy in my lifetime,” McCain told Brian Kilmeade on his radio program.

In 2008, Powell’s late backing of Obama over McCain was one of the most widely-covered endorsements of the campaign.

Once again, Powell weighed in towards the end of the race this week, telling CBS News that he stands by the president based on his first term performance on the economy and foreign policy alike. According to Powell, he witnessed “the president get us of one war, start to get us out of a second war and did not get us into any new wars. And finally I think that the actions he has taken with respect to protecting us from terrorism have been very very solid. And so, I think we ought to keep on the track that we are on.”

good morning,
I just sent this link to someone close to me-a young man on the rise who’s concerned about the money he’s now making after investing so much in his education, etc….young upwardly mobile people -in particular-are being misled about money-deliberately—so these links, in particular, are SOO valuable to find/post—
Thank you, 3chicspolitico, for publishing up-to-the-minute reports on this election…
Marla

Republican officials, who have used hysteria about alleged voter fraud as an excuse to support measures that disproportionately block Democratic voters, are furiously trying to distance themselves from a growing number of GOP voter registration drives that either submitted false applications or threw away authentic ones.
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The GOP has been the one committing voter fraud all along but blaming it on Acorn. IMO…The GOP is nothing more than a criminal organization. They don’t give a dm about this country. Vote every last one of them out. They shouldn’t have power on any level.

Consumer confidence last week reached a six-month high as U.S. households became less pessimistic about the economy.

The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index rose to minus 34.6 in the period ended Oct. 21, the eighth gain in the last nine weeks, from minus 34.8 the previous period. Americans’ views of economy were the brightest since early May.
Enlarge image Consumer Comfort in U.S. Climbs to Highest Level Since April

Lower gasoline prices, an improving housing market and less joblessness may be helping to ease anxiety as the world’s largest economy approaches a presidential election in less than two weeks. Federal Reserve policy makers yesterday acknowledged a pickup in household spending that is helping to sustain growth as business investment and exports slow.

“Consumer sentiment continues an impressive rebound from summertime lows, mainly due to falling gasoline costs and stabilization of housing prices,” said Joseph Brusuelas, a senior economist at Bloomberg LP in New York. The labor market will “likely continue to see modest gains, which probably bolstered income expectations among households.”

Mark Halperin of Time sometimes epitomizes the things that make me crazy about the MSM; he was, after all, founder of The Note back when it defined the self-referential Beltway CW, and was co-author of Game Change, whose very title reflected the view that the sort of things that matter to Mark Halperin actually control the outcome of major elections.

But Halperin is certainly big-time enough that he can get access to people inside presidential campaigns who don’t talk to many folk, and his piece on conversations with the Obama campaign has some interesting nuggets, even if you think “Chicago” felt no compunction to tell him the truth. Here’s the key segment:

Said one senior official: “[T]he most important thing about early vote is one thing and one thing only: are you getting your sporadic voters to vote? Because if it’s just chasing people who are going to vote anyway than it’s just…a zero sum game. But all the data I see says we are getting our sporadics to vote at a higher rate than they are, which, especially for any Democratic candidate, is a bigger challenge because we have lower propensity voters. That’s exactly what we are doing and we feel great about that.”

[Jim] Messina claims that in the battleground states, “two-thirds of those who have already voted are women, youth, African Americans or Latinos,” who are, of course, giving a large percentage of their support to the incumbent

Sporadics, marginals, low-propensity voters: these are all terms for non-likely-voters who wind up voting. If you do an unusually good job at turning them out, it will indeed change the shape of the electorate in ways that many polls may not catch (at least until very late). And if you turn them out early, as “Chicago” is claiming is already happening, then you have a lot more tactical flexibility to deploy resources the rest of the way. To put it another way, it’s not just a matter of estimating Ds versus Rs in the early vote, it also involves which Ds and Rs turn out, and the best way to measure (if you can) that is by race, gender and age as compared to historical patterns.

It sounds to me like “Chicago” is looking at the final phase of the campaign in an entirely sensible way that doesn’t depend on a lot of mumbo-jumbo about “enthusiasm” or “momentum,” or put undue weight on undecideds. As to whether the Obama campaign (or for that matter, the opposition) is actually hitting its marks—well, I doubt they’d feel Mark Halperin should be the first to know.

The Digital Leap, Social Media, and Why Pundits Get it Wrong on Minority Vote

Wednesday, October 24, 2012 | Posted by Deaniac83 at 2:31 PM

We already know that the President is running up unprecedented amounts of support among minority voters, particularly Hispanics. But I have been told not to bother with the minority vote, since they never come out to vote (evidently neither the 2008 national election nor the 2010 Senate election in Nevada actually took place). There are a lot of ways to gauge minority voter participation this year – the President’s extraordinarily high approval among minorities, his push for and action on immigration, the Republicans’ stern anti-immigrant, intolerant posture, etc. But I want to present a tangible reason to pay attention to the minority – especially the Latino – vote this year: technology; specifically smartphones. This may be a whole new ballgame from the one pundits are used to.

When the Internet became commonplace, the digital divide in home Internet indicated some time ago ethnic minorities suffering from an access gap. Here’s what’s changing that: smartphones. We are now experiencing a digital leap – in which the tables are turned and minorities are more likely to own smartphones than are whites. Nielson’s Mobile Inside Study gives us a look into the picture:

Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama this morning on CBS News has some obvious high points for the president. Powell strongly defended Obama’s economic record, pointing out that Obama inherited an economy in free fall, and noting that we’re “starting to gain altitude.” That’s important, since Obama has now pivoted to a stronger argument that we are in recovery (see the new minute-long ad making that case).

Powell pointed out that Obama is winding down the wars while also remaining “very solid” in “protecting us from terrorism,” which is in keeping with the two pronged message that the Obama administration is ending Bush’s overseas adventures while descimating Al Qaeda.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the interview came when Powell hit Romney on trust. Here’s what he said:

“I have concerns about his views on foreign policy. The Governor, who was speaking on Monday night at the debate, was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier. So I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy…
“It’s a moving target. One day he has a certain strong view about staying in Afghanistan, but then on Monday night he agrees with the withdrawal. Same thing in Iraq. On almost every issue that was discussed on Monday night, Governor Romney agreed with the President, with some nuances. But this is quite a different set of foreign policy views than he had earlier in the campaign. And my concern, which I’ve expressed previously in a public way, is that sometimes I don’t sense that he has thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have, and he gets advice from his campaign staff that he then has to adjust to modify as he goes along.”

If it’s late October, that can only mean one thing: election shenanigans in Florida.

The FBI and U.S. Postal Service agents are investigating bogus official-looking letters sent to voters in at least 28 Florida counties questioning their citizenship and their eligibility to vote, NBC News has learned.

David Couvertier, a spokesman for the FBI in Tampa, said his office opened up an investigation into the possible attempt at voter intimidation on Wednesday after receiving reports that eligible voters throughout the state have received the letters. […]

The fake letters, which first started showing up last Friday, have been sent under the names of real Florida county election supervisors — with some correct contact information — informing the voters that the supervisors have received “information” about their citizenship status, “bringing into doubt your eligibility as a registered voter.”

I can’t find prepared remarks or a transcript just yet for Paul Ryan’s big “poverty” speech in Ohio today, but an account from The Hill probably tells you pretty much everything you need to know:

[Ryan] said a Romney administration would apply the pattern set by the welfare reform to preserving and strengthening other “safety net” programs, specifically by handing more power back to the states to tailor them to the needs of their residents.

“We will not defer to the Washington-knows-best crowd,” he promised. He described the work of several businessmen and private charities, saying he and Romney would defer to their example as they shaped public policy.

In other words, Medicaid and food stamps will be block-granted, which in the former case will (along with the repeal of ObamaCare) eliminate health insurance for 31 to 37 million poor people, and in the latter eliminate food assistance for a mere 10 million. And since Medicaid, food stamps and the earned-income-tax-credit (extremely unlikely to survive a Romney administration attack on “tax loopholes”) were key working-poor supports underlying welfare reform, it’s unlikely welfare reform will exactly thrive, either.

And so, the entire Romney/Ryan “poverty” strategy is basically to consign poor people to the bracing independence of relying on an unimaginable boom in jobs that will supposedly be produced by tax and spending cuts.

Obama’s Edge: The Ground Game That Could Put Him Over the Top
Oct 24 2012, 10:30 AM ET

A giant chalkboard takes up a wall in this unassuming office suite hung with Obama signs, one of more than 60 campaign offices for the president in this battleground state. On it is drawn a calendar of the final weeks before the election. Phone banks, canvasses, and campaign events are marked in color-coded chalk. And every Saturday through Nov. 6, in capital letters, is marked “DRY RUN” — a precision-timed Election Day simulation drill, where everything from data reporting to snacks is rehearsed down to the minute.

Forget the polls, the debates, the last-minute ads and volleys of insults. This is how the Obama campaign plans to win the election.

Four years ago, Barack Obama built the largest grassroots organization in the history of American politics. After the election, he never stopped building, and the current operation, six years in the making, makes 2008 look like “amateur ball,” in the words of Obama’s national field director Jeremy Bird. Republicans insist they, too, have come a long way in the last four years. But despite the GOP’s spin to the contrary, there’s little reason to believe Mitt Romney commands anything comparable to Obama’s ground operation.

And this time, Obama may actually need it.

Though he trounced John McCain organizationally four years ago, the irony was that Obama didn’t really need his sophisticated field organization. Riding a wave of voter enthusiasm and Bush fatigue, and crushing McCain with fundraising and TV ad spending, Obama almost certainly would have won the 2008 election anyway. The political operative’s rule of thumb is that organization can increase your share of the vote by two percentage points; Obama won the national popular vote by seven points. One academic study looked at Obama’s edge in field offices and concluded they probably put a couple of extra states in his column, but he would have won without them.

I was having so much fun with the last thread that I didn’t want to create a new one. But I guess we have an election to win, so, FORWARD! I really got a boost out of reading this excellent article about Obama’s superior ground game. You know, as much as I’d like to win this election by twenty points, a small part of me would like to win it narrowly because our community organizers out-hustled the Republicans. I’m still a community organizer at heart, and I’m like anyone else. I don’t like to be disrespected.
The following paragraph says a lot:

Some Republicans admit that the ground game is a weakness for the party. In Colorado, one top GOP consultant who has worked on presidential campaigns told me he mentally added 2 to 4 points to Obama’s polls in the state based on superior organization. In Florida, GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart said Republicans would win in other ways: “They’re very organized. They’re very, very organized, and you have to admit they’re very organized,” Diaz-Balart said of the Democrats. “However, I think Republicans are very motivated.

The Republicans are very motivated by greed and racism. The Democrats are very organized around making this country a better place.

Mitt Romney is fond of saying that his goal is to win 50.1 percent of the vote, but his real goal should be 270—the number of electoral votes he would need to win in order to claim the presidency. That’s not news to anyone who reads Daily Kos—Markos has been pointing this out for months now—but Romney’s rapid gains in national polling after the first debate led to a sort of Romnesia in the beltway that resulted in too many pundits forgetting the basic electoral math. Yesterday, Charlie Cook offered a reminder that it doesn’t look as good for Mitt Romney as it does for President Obama:

But if the national polls are looking even, that doesn’t mean that the election is an even-money contest. Although this race is very close, the road to 270 electoral votes is considerably more difficult for Romney than it is for Obama. The president starts off with undisputed leads in 16 states and the District of Columbia with 237 electoral votes, 33 short of the 270 needed to win. Romney begins with equally clear leads in 23 states with 191 electoral votes, 79 short of a victory.

Nine states with 110 electoral votes are in the admittedly broad Toss-Up column (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin). Obama needs to win 30 percent of those Toss-Up electoral votes; Romney needs 72 percent of those votes.
As Greg Sargent and Steve Benen note, the conventional wisdom among beltway pundits seems to be remembering the reality of the electoral math. Two perfect examples of this: Politico’s Mike Allen and ABC’s Rick Klein.

Bottom line: Yes, this is a close race. Yes, the first debate appears to have given Romney a boost, but it wasn’t a big enough boost to put him ahead in the electoral math and there’s no evidence to suggest that he continues to have any forward momentum. Even if the national popular vote were a tossup, Obama has a real edge in the states that matter. The race is by no means over, but for Romney to win, he needs to shift the electoral map in his favor. So far, he hasn’t been able to do it.

Paul Ryan gave a speech on poverty and economic mobility.
No, that’s not the beginning of one of those a-man-walks-into-a-bar jokes. It actually happened.

Ryan delivered the speech Wednesday in Cleveland. “In this war on poverty,” he said, “poverty is winning.” What he didn’t say is that he and his budget have taken sides in that war — and not on the side of the poor.

This is just the latest of Mitt Romney’s home-stretch attempts to kick up the dust of confusion, soften harsh rhetoric and policies, and slip into the White House.

what would happen to a BLACK elected official that had been caught:
being arrested UNDER ANOTHER NAME?

Just askin’.

…………………………………………………….

When Todd Akin went by a different name

By Steve Benen
Wed Oct 24, 2012 2:56 PM EDT

A few weeks ago, Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin acknowledged that he’d been arrested at an anti-abortion protest many years ago, and promised he’d release the details of his arrest soon. A week later, Akin staffers said the candidate had changed his mind: no details would be forthcoming.

So, what’s the story? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch dug a little deeper, and uncovered a detail I hadn’t expected.

Congressman Todd Akin was arrested at least three times in the 1980s during anti-abortion protests, not just the one time he has publicly acknowledged.

Akin’s previously undisclosed arrests, in 1985, were for criminal trespass and resisting arrest at abortion clinic protests in St. Louis and Illinois.

And why haven’t we heard about this sooner? That’s the interesting part — when Akin was arrested three times, he used his given name, William Akin. It’s why folks couldn’t find anything when they looked up arrest records for “Todd Akin.”

This explains the white privilege card very well, doesn’t it? Whites aren’t criminals, don’tcha know! The folks in these states who vote for these clowns against their own better interest need their azzes whipped.

POWELL: Well, you know I voted for him in 2008 and I plan to stick with him in 2012, and I’ll be voting for he and for Vice President Joe Biden next month.

ROSE: That’s an endorsement for President Obama for re-election?

POWELL: Yes. And let me say why. When he took over the country was in very, very difficult straits, we were in one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression. The fiscal system was collapsing. Wall Street was in chaos. We had 800,000 jobs lost in that first month of the Obama administration and unemployment would peak a few months later at 10%. So we were in real trouble. The auto industry was collapsing. The housing industry was starting to collapse, and we were in very difficult straits. And I saw over the next several years stabilization come back in the financial community, housing is now starting to pick up after four years, it’s starting to pick up. Consumer confidence is rising.

So I think generally we’ve come out of the dive and we’re starting to gain altitude. It doesn’t mean we are problem solved, there are lots of problems still out there. The unemployment rate is too high. People are still hurting in housing. But I see that we are starting to rise up. I also saw the President get us out of one war, start to get us out of a second war and did not get us into any new wars. And finally, I think that the actions he’s taken with respect to protecting us from terrorism have been very, very solid.

And so I think we ought to keep on the track that we are on. With respect to Governor Romney, I have the utmost respect to him but as I listen to what his proposals are especially with respect to dealing with our most significant issue, the economy, it’s essentially let’s cut taxes and compensate for that with other things. But that compensation does not cover all of the cuts intended or the new expenses associated with defense.

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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.